Gina Barreca: Kavanaugh Backer's Ugly Coat-Hanger Post

Pro-life activists mix with pro-choice activists during the March for Life Jan. 19 in Washington, DC., in demonstrations similar to those surrounding Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court appointment. (Alex Wong /)

Let’s all be disgusted by misogyny again, shall we?

Let’s send every desperate woman forced to carry an unwanted and unplanned pregnancy to the home of a conservative lawmaker. We can start by sending them to the home of Parkersburg, W.Va., City Councilman Eric Barber, who posted on his Facebook page the following message, which I am repeating as written: “Better get you’re coat hangers ready liberals.”

Barber was apparently referring to the Senate’s confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. Kavanaugh is seen by his supporters as an opponent of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion. When abortions were illegal, coat hangers became a symbol of the dangerous and sometimes fatal methods women would use to end pregnancies. Barber’s post recalled that dark time with no sign of empathy for the desperate women who sought back-alley abortions. He later apologized for an “insensitive” post and said it referred to his having been hit by a hanger thrown by a pro-abortion rights demonstrator in Washington. Even it that’s so, how could he have not known how his words would be interpreted?

President Donald Trump says it’s a scary time to be a man in America. Let’s make it an even tougher time to be an entitled white guy who believes it’s his heaven-sent right to decide what happens to the bodies of women and girls.

Let’s have him accept responsibility for his decisions when it comes to women’s health care and the ability to terminate a pregnancy. Let him face the consequences of his choice. Let’s have him pay all the bills, deal with the woman’s depression, despair and sense of hopelessness. And, of course, let’s make sure he helps the woman — whose decision he made — to re-enter the workplace or educational system without penalty. After all, it wasn’t her choice to have the child. It was his.

If the conservative activist is a woman — and some of them are — they, too, should be made responsible for the child they mandate be brought to term. Let’s also make sure that the designated anti-abortion activist adopts the newborn, raises the child, pays for all medical care, schooling and activities. As the child grows, we should insist activists personally provide the same sort of vigilance for the rights of the already-born as they believe belong to the unborn.

Oddly enough, despite the fact that the rights of already-born seem to be of little interest to anti-abortion advocates, dogmatically right-wing lawmakers want to ensure, above all else, that children are had, right? Isn’t that what underscores their outrage at the very thought that women can freely make our own decisions about sex and reproduction?

These cynically sanctimonious, morally smug and spiritually vain bullies still don’t think of women as actual people. They dismiss women as vehicular: wombs are inviolable spaces — even if women can be violated — because wombs are the way for a man to make another man. Women’s reproductive organs are like parking spaces for the offspring of men, and therefore need to be organized and designated by authorities.

The goal of overturning Roe v. Wade, which is the sole reason Brett Kavanaugh is now on the Supreme Court (and you know it), is why folks like Eric Barber felt he could blow his ungrammatical horn in gloating triumph.

But making abortion a criminal offense won’t touch everyone. It will not, for example, have much of an effect on the wealthy and independent. Women and girls from rich families and women with their own money have always been able to terminate unwanted pregnancies. If Roe vs. Wade is overturned, women with money and connections will fly to places where abortion is legal.

It’s women who are uneducated and ashamed of their bodies, poor women, young women and scared women who will be affected by the overturning of Roe v. Wade and it will wreck their lives. Because they, too, will stop their pregnancies. But they won’t be able to escape to another country; they’ll just destroy themselves, right here in the U.S.

Those who want to keep women from having mastery of our own bodies should be ashamed.

Let’s stop equating authority with masculinity. Let’s tell these lawmakers to use “your” and “you’re” correctly, as in the following sentence: “Your laws won’t rule my body. You’re not going to be in power long.”

Gina Barreca is a board of trustees distinguished professor of English literature at University of Connecticut and the author of 10 books. She can be reached at www.ginabarreca.com.